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book review: the chains that you refuse

Another one from the CBC Calgary book sale, Elizabeth Bear’s collection of short stories The Chains That You Refuse was pretty decent. Bear is another of these SF writers I’ve heard people talk about on the intertubes but never read before. None of the stories really made me go wow, but I didn’t cringe through any either. I like “One-eyed Jack and the Suicide King” because of its Tim Powers-ishness, and “Two Dreams on Trains” was pretty and sad. Other than that, it was all fine, though sort of samey even across wildly different subject matter. And since the voice wasn’t anything really distinctive I felt a bit meh.